A tale of the scale (for the scale voyeurs!)

First the BIG news. I just got back from a Salsa lesson and I still feel mostly pain free. A little tightness on the left but nothing that could be described as 'pain'. I was very good. I did 40 minutes of rehab exercises and stretches before even heading out the door. ;)

Feb is over and it's time to evaluate where I'm at with the gradual fatloss through non-dieting thing. First a brief history of coming out of BED (Binge Eating Disorder). April 2006 I decided that I needed to tackle the Binge Eating problem head on by following something similar to the 4 steps of Normal Eating. This involved a complete reversal of what I'd been trying to do - lose weight through dieting. In my new plan, there was only one rule - no binging. That's it. I could eat what I wanted, I could even overeat, but no binges. The most tricky thing about getting out of binge eating disorder is that you really need to be in a state of 'not hungry' (i.e. not trying to lose weight) in order to discover what drives the binging - it's very hard to differentiate between emotional hunger and physical hunger when you are nearly always physically hungry. I took my focus off food and weight, told myself that gaining weight didn't bother me (a BALD FACED LIE, but I had to not care about that for a while) and got on with finding out what emotional issues were behind my urges to stuff my face. I didn't throw all my knowledge of good nutrition away though, as some do when embracing 'intuitive eating'. I ate my protein and veges and kept exercising. I decided that I would stick with the emotional focus until mid-August and then evaluate where I was at with my weight. I did not weigh myself. I worked on self-acceptance and on realising that the scales only measure weight, not self-worth. I worked on 'it's not about the food or weight'.

Mid August I got on the scales and was 63.7kg. I should have been horrified but I felt nothing and took this to be an extremely positive sign. I had learned another interesting thing. Avoiding the scales because it affects self esteem is a sign that those numbers mean too much. Now I weigh whenever the hell I feel like it, sometimes every day. It's just 'data'. Mid August I also evaluated how many calories I was eating, approximately and started shifting my nutrition toward a slight negative calorie balance, without being too dramatic about it. I started re-working my meals to increase the nutrients and decrease the cals without sacrificing the flavour and slowly my weight has decreased. My goal is 55kg and I don't have a timeframe for that. Sometime this year would be great.

My average weights since mid August (in kg):
Aug 06: 62.7 (highest 63.7, lowest 62.1)
Sept 06: 61.7 (highest 63.2, lowest 61.0)
Oct 06: 61.2 (highest 61.7, lowest 60.3)
Nov 06: 60.4 (highest 61.3, lowest 60.0)
Dec 06: 60.2 (highest 60.8, lowest 59.8)
Jan 07: 60.1 (highest 60.8, lowest 59.5)
Feb 07: 59.3 (highest 59.9, lowest 58.8)

You can see that it's really a slow process but it's stable, manageable, even enjoyable. In a few more months I'll post a graph that shows the ups and downs. You will see that sometimes I have, on a particular day, been a kg heavier than on that day the month before. That can really mess with your head if you are still emotionally connected to the little red numbers! I think it was Einstein that said something like 'you can't get too excited by either the ups or the downs'.. how true, how true.